Dawn Villela / Associated PressWriter Diablo Cody reflects on the breakup of her marriage, her move to Los Angeles and her Golden Globe nomination for best screenplay for the movie "Juno."

MINNEAPOLIS -- Diablo Cody has a tough-chick reputation -- the tattooed, punkish sex blogger wrote a book about her year as a stripper, and the name of her blog is too risque for family newspapers.

But the novice screenwriter also has written a sweet, PG-13 movie that's shaping up as a holiday hit.

"Juno," a sardonic comedy about a pregnant 16-year-old who becomes a "cautionary whale" for her classmates, is rolling out to more and more theaters, picking up rave reviews and Oscar buzz along the way. And Cody is in demand, with several projects -- including one with Steven Spielberg -- pending. Entertainment Weekly recently ranked her 38th on a list of the 50 smartest people in Hollywood.

"It's insane, it really is. I sometimes wonder how much stimulation one person can take," Cody said during a "Juno" promotional stop in her former hometown. "I really feel like I have adrenaline fatigue or something."

Cody, 29, has defied high odds. Not only has her first screenplay been produced -- "Juno" reaches the screen just over two years after she wrote the first draft -- but she says it's virtually untouched from her original vision.

The chances of that happening are "one in a bazillion," said Mason Novick, who stumbled across Cody's racy blog and ended up becoming her manager.

Ellen Page and Michael Cera star in "Juno."

"Hollywood likes to hire a lot of writers and go through a lot of rigamarole," said Novick, one of the "Juno" producers. But the film's partners "knew that was her (Cody's) voice ... and left it alone."

In the movie, precocious Juno MacGuff (played by diminutive, 20-year-old Ellen Page) finds herself pregnant by high school friend Paulie Bleeker, a breath-mint-popping track star played by Michael Cera. After deciding against an abortion, Juno seeks out a childless yuppie couple (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman) "desperately seeking spawn" (in the words of Juno's cheerleader girlfriend) who agree to adopt Juno's baby.

Cody, who grew up in Lemont, Ill., outside of Chicago, was inspired by a high school friend who got pregnant and had some of the same experiences as the movie's title character, such as being mistreated by an ultrasound technician.

But Cody (real name Brook Busey-Hunt -- she took her pen name during a trip to Cody, Wyo.) said Juno is based on herself as a teenager. Juno's hamburger-shaped phone echoes one Cody herself had when she was growing up.

"I always say I'm kind of an emotional scavenger, because everything that I write about is drawn from life, it's drawn from experience that I actually had," Cody said.
Cody chronicled her adventures as a stripper in Minneapolis in the 2006 memoir "Candy Girl." For "Juno," she said, she drew on her experiences when she was "young and sweet."

"I was able to kind of revisit that time," she said, "before the stripping, before anything in my life was vulgar."'

"Juno" director Jason Reitman, 30, said he was intimidated to meet Cody after reading her sophisticated screenplay, but the feeling didn't last long.

"And I've just kind of absolutely fell in love with her. We just clicked from moment one, and it became kind of a very strong collaborative working relationship in which she was on-set almost every day," Reitman said in a telephone interview.

Cody's wit shines through "Juno." In one scene, Juno explains how her father named her after the Roman queen of the gods who was "really beautiful but really mean -- like Diana Ross." When Garner's icily perfect character tells Juno that her parents may be wondering where she is, Juno replies: "I'm already pregnant, so what other kind of shenanigans can I get into?"

Reitman said he was amazed to find out that Cody -- who banged out "Juno" on a laptop at a Starbucks in a suburban Target -- had no formal training as a screenwriter. He also didn't know her background as a one-time stripper.

"I thought, 'This girl's got a lotta wit,' and the words on the page seemed to live up to the woman. I was also struck by how much heart she had," Reitman recalls. "In our first meeting we talked ... as much about the ending of the movie being moving as we talked about the beginning of the movie being kind of snappy and funny."

"Juno" is playing at Rave Cityplace 14, Celebration! Crossroads and W. Columbia 7 in Battle Creek.